That could not be it.
‘I must have misheard it.’
It was true that, as he lay dying, he had called upon the strongest being he could summon to take revenge for him. However, he had not used so much as a speck of magic connected to the Demon Realm.
Even so, he could not completely dismiss his unease.
‘The timing matches far too perfectly.’
Five years ago.
Demons had suddenly appeared in Arpad Academy, the pride of the Empire.
It was a mass demon summoning incident of unknown origin, occurring without warning or omen.
Several demons that escaped the academy at the time had thrown the entire Empire into chaos. The Order of Holy Knights, which had grown complacent after a long period of peace, had been devastated.
The Emperor decided that the Empire itself would be shaken if any more demons escaped. He swiftly mobilized his divine power and the imperial army to seal off the academy.
Everyone inside the academy had been trapped, regardless of whether they were students, professors, or staff members. For the past five years, they had survived on supplies provided by the Empire, with neither new students entering nor graduates leaving.
‘On top of that, the Emperor overexerted his divine power while sealing the academy and has been bedridden ever since. The Crown Prince is the one who actually handles the affairs of state.’
That was not good.
A Crown Prince wielding unstable authority would seek achievements to secure the throne, and he would naturally keep his famous younger brother in check.
‘Why did I have to become the Third Prince of all people?’
He clutched his head.
Third Imperial Prince Julian Barnabas Istvan.
Even Choi Ui-hyeon, who had spent his life shut away in a laboratory as a professor’s slave—or rather, an assistant—had been familiar with that name.
‘There were countless students at the academy who carried his portrait around.’
He possessed brilliant golden hair and eyes identical to those of the Founding Emperor, who was said to have been the Son of God.
He possessed tremendous divine power.
Even the middle name that God was said to bestow upon members of the imperial family was Barnabas, meaning Child of Prophecy.
Everyone in the Empire had believed that the Third Prince would become a hero who carried out the will of God.
He had truly been the Holy Empire’s greatest star……
Yet the treatment Julian received after awakening in the Third Prince’s body had been entirely different.
There was the desolate prince’s palace, maintained by only a handful of attendants, and the whispers that he seemed to have survived yet another episode.
Even the physician had repeatedly questioned him in astonishment.
‘You can see me clearly? How many is this? What about hallucinations? You are not hearing any strange voices either?’
Everything pointed to a single conclusion.
‘He went mad during those five years…….’
His head began to ache.
He might have summoned the demons when he died five years ago, and the body he had now possessed belonged to an insane prince who had once been the imperial family’s greatest star.
‘What kind of damned situation is this?’
Julian unconsciously let out a sigh.
“……Therefore, what if the Third Prince were to put his abilities to use?”
‘Huh?’
Lost in thought, Julian raised his head. Every high-ranking official in the council chamber was looking at him.
“My... abilities?”
“Yes. You could use Your Highness’s abundant divine power to rescue the academy.”
The Chancellor continued.
“Has Your Highness not neglected your imperial duties until now on account of your illness?”
That illness had been caused by the divine power inherited through the imperial bloodline. It had been so powerful that it gradually consumed his mind.
The Third Prince had finally collapsed after an episode one month ago.
People in the Imperial Palace had already begun discussing whether they should prepare for his funeral, only for him to miraculously awaken several days earlier.
“I heard that an extraordinary burst of divine power occurred when Your Highness awakened.”
“Hmm.”
“The Empire is in crisis, Your Highness. The Third Prince is seventeen this year, which is old enough to attend the academy. Send him there as a special-admission freshman and have him use his divine power against the demons.”
“That would be best, Your Highness.”
“The people of the Empire will be deeply moved by the imperial family’s resolve and grace.”
Julian scoffed inwardly.
‘Your intentions could not be more obvious.’
Third Imperial Prince Julian had once been someone capable of competing with the Crown Prince for the imperial throne, had he not gone mad.
How disappointed must the Crown Prince have been when Julian survived?
He was probably planning to use the holy war against the demons as a pretext to eliminate him.
‘Whether it is the academy or the Imperial Palace, the bastards at the top are all the same.’
He could not remain passive.
A life spent being pushed around by the demands of the powerful, exploited, stabbed, and killed.
He had already experienced enough of that in his previous life.
‘I would sooner die than go through that again.’
Julian opened his mouth with a defiant tilt of his head.
“What a pointless scheme.”
The words flowed smoothly from his lips, and he paused to move his tongue inside his mouth. His voice, resonating with divine power, drew the attention of everyone in the council chamber.
“W-what did Your Highness just say?”
“I said that it was a pointless scheme.”
As expected, he could speak properly in this body.
The realization gave him even more confidence.
“…….”
The Chancellor and the other high-ranking officials stiffened at the unexpected response. The Chancellor made no attempt to conceal his displeasure.
“It appears that the Third Prince regards his imperial duties far too lightly.”
“You are the one regarding them lightly, Chancellor.”
Julian stared at him coldly.
“Is the tragedy of Arpad Academy merely something for you to exploit in your petty political games?”
A brief silence followed. Julian continued.
“Are there not people seated here whose children or relatives are trapped inside Arpad Academy?”
The silence grew longer.
Julian looked around at the now-quiet officials.
Did these people know?
Did they know what the academy’s students were like?Why will you not accept my report? Why?!
-The deadline passed a week ago.
-Ah, this is so frustrating! Even if it has been a week, the professor cannot have read all the reports yet! You can just slip mine beneath the others! Why are you so inflexible?
There had been students who submitted their reports a full week late and then acted as though he were the one in the wrong.
-Excuse me, why is my grade like this?
-It was entered correctly. I am certain.
-There is no way I could have received this grade! There must have been some mistake.
-It was entered correctly.
-Just check it once! Is that so difficult? What exactly does an assistant even do?
And that was hardly all.
The people in the administrative office had often driven him mad with their atrocious handling of paperwork.
-Departmental funds for the Department of Summoning Magic? Why are you asking about that here? Did you not hear that a grant was issued after the departments were merged?
-I heard. But the professor said the grant and the departmental funds were different.
-Ah, Professor Blanco misunderstood. The departmental funds are being paid according to last year’s standard, with the grant added on top.
Then, immediately before he applied for the departmental funds, they would tell him that the information had been incorrect and order him to submit the documents again.
When he hurriedly prepared everything they had requested, they would suddenly claim that additional documents were required and make him run back and forth like a trained dog.
That was not all. Whenever a faculty member went on vacation, an assistant had to fill the vacant position.
-I heard Assistant Choi is coming to work in my place during this vacation?
-Yes. I will also do my assistant work. It is difficult. I want a vacation too.
-Come now. Assistants do not get vacations in the first place, do they? You have to work anyway, so let us do it with a smile. It will feel wonderful if all those backlogged documents are gone when I return! Ha ha ha!
…….
He had been so furious that he had almost expected lightning magic to shoot from his fingertips.
‘Whew. I might have been the academy’s slave, but if I had been able to speak properly back then, I would have given them a piece of my mind.’
Whenever chaos erupted over scholarship payments or corrections to course registration, he had been the one cursed from every direction.
-Assistant! That bastard must have destroyed my application with magic! I definitely submitted my scholarship application!
-He started it! He cast a Sleep spell on me whenever I tried to study!
-……Both of you will be disciplined.
-W-what?
-You are not even a professor! What right do you have to discipline us?!
-I know that very well. Then why did you come to me?
-Ugh! You are completely useless!
-What exactly do you even do as an assistant?!
There had been far too many students who could not utter a word of protest to a professor, only to come and make a scene before an assistant they considered an easy target.
‘They were budding menaces, every last one of them.’
However.
Did that mean everything about the academy had been miserable?
No.
‘Had that been the case, even a foreign laborer with nowhere else to go would have fled the academy long ago.’
The rotten ones simply caused enough trouble for a hundred people each. Not every student had been like that.
Most of the students were ordinary children who genuinely wanted to learn magic.
They complained about the terrible food in the student cafeteria. They skipped class, only to fall asleep on the bench directly beneath the professor’s office and get caught. On Teachers’ Day, they pooled their meager allowances to buy even their foreign assistant a cake.
They were ordinary boys and girls.
-Assistant! Over here! Over here!
-Look! We had this cake specially made!
-……Thank you.
-Huh? That is not the reaction we expected.
-Exactly. You are supposed to say, ‘This is delicious.’
-What do you think I am……?
Demons had been summoned into an academy filled with students like them, and the Empire had sealed the place off.
Humans and demons had been trapped together inside the academy for five years.
“…….”
Julian’s mouth went dry.
He remembered the countless students and fellow assistants he had known.
His stomach churned. His anger toward the powerful bastards before him mingled with an uneasy sense of guilt over the academy.
‘If I had power.’
Julian wished for it with all his heart.
‘If I had the power to make these bastards pay and save the academy.’
His blood began to boil.
Just as magic power had once coursed through his veins when he lived as Assistant Choi, Julian’s divine power awakened and began surging throughout his body.
An explosive wave of divine power swept through the council chamber.
“!”
The pro-war faction regarded him as a sacrifice with which to begin a holy war.
The pro-peace faction belittled him and treated him like a fool.
The Crown Prince Faction wanted to cast him into the academy and let him stumble into one death route or another, whether through exile, expulsion, or actual death.
Even the Saintess and the representatives of the Temple had made no effort to hide that they regarded him as a discarded pawn.
Without exception, every one of them was overwhelmed and left gaping.
“Ugh…….”
There was nothing of the warm, sheltering power of the God of Light they knew.
This divine power was as intense and crushing as the sun at the height of summer. Its tyrannical force erupted as though it would bleach the entire chamber white.
“I will ask you one question.”
Julian’s golden eyes blazed.
“What sort of place is Arpad Academy?”
Those who had covered their eyes, bowed their heads, or struggled to steady their breathing looked toward him.
“Was it not built upon the land through which the strongest magic power in the Empire flows, for the purpose of nurturing the Empire’s future greatest mages and Magic Swordsmen? Are its professors and students not talents destined to lead the future of imperial magic?”
“…….”
“Do you not care if we lose every one of them? Would you be content to see them fall into despair and join the demons?”
The divine power pressing down on their bodies intensified with his rebuke. The high-ranking officials could offer no flimsy excuses. They could only swallow dryly.
Julian looked around the council chamber.
“You may not care, but I do. I will save them.”
Power filled his voice.
“I will save those students, who are both the people and the future of the Empire.”
The high-ranking officials in the council chamber could not respond.
Overcome by admiration, awe, and fear, they stared at the Third Prince as searing divine power poured from his body.
Julian addressed them.
“I have no need for the position you prepared for me.”
His declaration reverberated through the chamber.
“I, Julian Barnabas Istvan, will not enter Arpad Academy as a leashed special-admission freshman. I will become its headmaster and save its students.”
The Third Prince whom they had merely intended to cast out had just declared that he would become the headmaster of the greatest magic academy in the Empire.
Yet no one could object that such a thing was impossible.
Julian rose from his seat and began walking. Those who saw the direction in which he was heading drew sharp breaths.
“Commander of the Holy Knights.”
At Julian’s call, the Commander unconsciously swallowed.
“Come with me. We are going to drive the demons out of the academy.”
It was a simple order.
It contained not a shred of the endless flattery and praise offered by the imperial family and the high-ranking officials—nothing about how courageous it was to face demons or how magnificent the knights were for protecting the Empire.
Nevertheless, the Commander of the Holy Knights rose as though spellbound.
“I will follow you.”
His answer was brief and resolute.
Having brought the Empire’s most powerful military force under his command in a single instant, Third Prince Julian turned his head.
The Crown Prince met his gaze, glaring at him with trembling eyes.
Julian did not look away. A victor’s smile slowly appeared on his lips.
‘This is it.’
He thought to himself.
‘This is what proper transmigration should be!’